Graft probe snares Tianjin mayor, a former Xi associate

Huang Xingguo

The highest-ranking Chinese Communist Party official investigated in more than than a year is a former subordinate of President Xi Jinping’s.
Huang Xingguo – mayor and acting party chief of northern port city Tianjin – is being probed for “serious disciplinary violations,” China’s top anti-graft agency said Saturday, using an official euphemism for graft. The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection statement provided no details about the nature of the allegations.
Huang’s unusually long 20-month stint as interim Tianjin leader took in the massive warehouse fire and chemical explosions in August last year that killed at least 165 people and caused almost USD1 billion in economic losses. He retained his posts even as scores of local government officials and port executives were punished for allowing the large stockpile of hazardous chemicals so close to a residential area, in violation of safety rules.
Before being sent to Tianjin in 2003, Huang, 61, spent more than three decades in the eastern province of Zhejiang, a stepping stone in Xi’s own rise and a lasting base of the president’s power. Huang led the key port city of Ningbo, overlapping with part of Xi’s five-year stint in the Zhejiang leadership where he was firstly governor and then party secretary.
“Huang didn’t lose his title in the aftermath of the Tianjin explosion, which showed there was some sort of ‘protective umbrella’ covering him,” said Zhang Lifan, a Beijing-based historian and political commentator. “It’s hard to say at this moment whether his case was too severe to paper over, or whether Xi wanted to use it to show that he’s ready to punish his own people if justice demands it.”
Party officials have usually been detained when disciplinary investigations are announced and Huang couldn’t be reached for comment.
Huang is the highest-ranking former Xi subordinate to fall from grace since the president took power in 2012 and launched an unprecedented crackdown on official corruption. The investigation adds intrigue to a wave of provincial-level promotions ahead of next month’s planned Central Committee meeting, which is expected to lay the groundwork for a twice-a-decade leadership reshuffle in 2017.
Had Huang formally assumed the top job in Tianjin – China’s fourth-largest city – he would’ve been expected to secure a seat on the party’s elite 25-member Politburo. Instead, he become the 10th Central Committee member investigated under Xi and the most senior official probed since ex-Hebei provincial party secretary Zhou Benshun was detained in July 2015.
Huang last appeared in public on Friday, when he visited a school and met with a delegation from Taiwan’s Kuomintang opposition, according to the official Tianjin Daily. The city now lacks a party secretary, mayor and public security chief, with the last occupant of the latter position detained in July 2014. So far, Xi’s anti-graft drive has ensnared three top Tianjin officials, including a deputy mayor placed under investigation last month. Bloomberg